The Sasuke Retrieval Arc: One Is Lost
by 7ShadowsUnleashed
Summary: A member of the Sasuke Retrieval Arc has died: how will the squad react? Konoha? Does Sasuke, who wrote their fate, even know? More information inside. Rated "T" for safety reasons.
1. Chapter 1: One is Lost

Summary: A member of the Sasuke Retrieval Arc has died: how will the squad react? Konoha? Does Sasuke, who wrote their fates, even know? More information inside. Rated "T" for safety reasons.

This takes place after the Sasuke Retrieval Arc's final battle. I was always curious about what would have happened if one of the Retrieval Squad's members had died: how the rest of the team would react, Konoha, Sasuke (possible, but I haven't decided yet)? The first chapter follows the death while successive stories follow the reactions.

I do not own Naruto. As much as I wish I did own at least a piece of the franchise, it belongs to Mr Kishimoto Masashi and associates.

Forgive my poor summary: I am new here. This is my first fan-fiction: please critique it so the next chapter[s] will be better.

Author: 7ShadowsUnleashed

Beta Reader: Euregatto

Æ

**Hyūga Neji**

His eyes had lost their lustrous light with the blood that seeped heavily from his wounds. Even from his retreat deep within his mind he could feel the flaring pain, the liquid fire of his blood rapidly cooling as it dripped down his skin.

His fingers detected the slightest of touches: soft, stiff canvass, rubbing cloth, cold wind brushing across his face and bare chest, his fluttering hair tickling his face. He hadn't felt the cold metal kunai knife across his torso, however, as his shirt—ruined by blood and perforated with tears—was cut away.

He was aware of the medic whispering words of encouragement in his ear. "Hold on, Neji. We will give you the best of care at Konoha Hospital if you just hang in there… just a little longer."

He wanted to reply, but he had lost the strength to move his lips. His normally-smooth tongue, perfect for executing clever remarks, felt useless; a thick piece of useless, suffocating flesh trapped behind his teeth.

**Head Medic**

Colour was slowly draining from the boy's face; leaving, it seemed, with the blood that oozed through once-white bandages wrapped around his torso. His colourless eyes peered between slotted lids as his blue lips attempted to form words.

The head medic motioned for the stretcher to be set down on the ground. "Put on more bandages. Don't move those already in place," he ordered. Kneeling beside the boy, he listened for rambling, strangled, almost-unintelligible or coherent words, but there were none.

"Sir," one of the medics whispered, glancing up from his work. "We cannot afford to linger long."

The head medic nodded before motioning for his team to continue.

**Hyūga Neji**

He was trapped in a thick fog. It swirled around him, engulfing him in an obsidian world. Sometimes the fog thinned enough for him to make out snippets of the outside world: the wind rushing past his ears, conversations, fabric tearing at the seams.

Names came through the clearest. The other members of the Sasuke Retrieval Squad: Naruto Uzumaki, Kiba Inozuka, Shikamaru Nara, and  
Choji Akimichi, were spoken in hushed tones. As much as he tried, Neji could not make out the rest of the statements. They wouldn't come through the lingering fog, no matter how barely present.

He wanted to scream, he wanted to cry, and he wanted do absolutely nothing at the same time. As the haze grew thicker, the words grew more and more garbled. Soon names wouldn't come through, only fragments of what might be names, dates, medicines, death notices, he did not know.

Not knowing hurt the most, more than the pain of his wounds.

Then, just as suddenly as it had come, the fog cleared, and everything rushed back to him.

A flood of light and sound. Blood steamed on the floor around him. Green writing looped around him, glowing with a faint light as it swam towards him like a shark towards blood. Someone was screaming.

"Neji." Someone held him tightly in their arms. "Neji!" Their voice radiated urgency. "Kito, find Tsunade."

_Tsunade?_

"He's bleeding out. I need bandages. Quickly, quickly. Neji, stay with me. Neji? Neji!"

He felt himself fading away again. Melting, it seemed, into the arms of whoever held him, blissfully accepting unconsciousness and the awaiting fog and darkness.

**Tsunade**

Tsunade was just sliding the last of the white ceramic mortars back into a cabinet when a flustered medical-nin bust through the door. Red faced and gasping, he managed a few words between hurried breaths.

"Lady … Tsunade …" he began.

"What is it, Kito?" she asked. The euphoria of Choji Akimichi's successful healing had vanished as soon as Kito burst through the door. Replacing it was concern slowly changing to mirror the horror etched into Kito's features.

"Hyūga … Neji …"

"What about him?" Tsunade asked. The urgency was palpable as Kito grabbed her by the wrist and dragged her out of the room.

"There's … very … little time," Kito gasped out. "… Healing Resuscitation … Regeneration … Technique … was a failure."

Tsunade gasped, her every thought turned to the dark-haired Hyūga prodigy a few halls away. She tore her hand from the medical-nin's grip and sprinted out of sight, leaving him in the dust, brainstorming a list of complications that could arise from the failed healing. She had put Shizune to the task, assured that her attendant's team of eight expert medical-nin could manage the procedure, but it was clearly not so and now a boy's life hung in limbo because of her poor decisions. She could feel Neji's life slipping from her grasp like a handful of sand running through the cracks between her fingers, rapidly and so much at once.

_What had gone wrong?_ She wondered. _Could the cells not regrow, or were the injuries far more significant than first speculated?_ The Hokage did not know.

She saw the operating room, big green sign broadcasting the words Operating Room 5 in fluorescent green letters to the congregation in the hall. She passed Shikamaru and his master, Asuma, seated on benches in the hallway. Sparing barely a step to nod, she threw the door open and burst into the room in time to see Shizune and a bespectacled medical-nin, Mogusa, slowly lay a limp body on the stone floor.

"Is that …"

Shizune wiped a tear from her cheek and turned to the Hokage. Her lips quivered too much to manage any words, so she nodded instead.

"I'll tell the team." Tsunade turned to leave but looked back to the exhausted medical-nin staring at the body with horror. No one had died under the Resuscitation Regeneration Technique until now: the loss had shaken them. "Take the rest of the day off," she added quickly, and she closed the door behind her.

Even with the door closed she still saw the silhouette of the body on the floor. _Not "the body,"_ she reminded herself,_ it's still Neji. It will always be Neji._

Somehow it felt wrong calling the body on the floor 'it' the same time she was trying to re-establish the connection to the spirit that had vacated, leaving an empty shell behind for hundreds of Ninja to mourn over before burying it in the earth and leaving a white gravestone to mark his existence in the world, to be forgotten just as the ones who came before him.

_How old were you, Neji? Fourteen?_

He was just a kid.

She felt Asuma's hand on her shoulder. Turning, she saw Shikamaru poised behind him. "How is he?" the young team leader asked tonelessly, although the concern was tucked away behind his eyes, visible despite the darkened orbs.

Tsunade had braced for this question. She faced the other way to avoid looking at them. Summoning every scrap of strength still lingering somewhere in herself, she said, quietly, "He didn't make it." and moved off down the hall, leaving the dumbstruck boy and his master in her wake, muting her own ears in case there was a responding scream.

**Shikamaru Nara**

"He didn't make it," Tsunade had informed them.

Shikamaru's gut curdled with a rare pang of rage and he called after the Hokage. "This isn't time for jokes! What do you mean 'he didn't make it?' "

Tsunade didn't answer but he could see her shoulders stiffen, her step quickening till she all-but ran down the hospital hall.

Slumping down on the bench, Shikamaru hung his head in his hands, knocking his nose against his splinted finger. "She doesn't mean it. She's lying, she's lying, she has to be lying." A familiar wetness burned through his eyelids, dripping in rivulets down his cheeks.

He felt Asuma's hand sneak up on his shoulders to give him a reassuring squeeze. "We should go see him, Shikamaru."

Shikamaru nodded but made no move to stand right away. He felt like a puppet that painted-faced sand boy had carried around – helpless without the stings binding him to his conscience, an empty body with no soul, yet unlike Neji, alive and with a beating heart. Every member of the Sasuke Retrieval Squad held one of those strings, supporting him and providing direction, but now one of his strings had been completely severed and with it part of him fell uselessly to his side.

He leaned against Asuma and cried. There was nothing the Jōnin master could do to stop him.

**Temari**

The sand shinobi found walking down the Konoha hospital almost as dangerous as waking her brother, Gaara, before _he_ decided he was ready to wake up. Almost, yes, but not quite. After dodging push carts and medical-nin left and right, at least two gurneys, and the distracted Hokage, who mistook her for someone else, Temari was not prepared for her day's further complication: the crying shadow-jutsu boy Shikamaru Nara.

He sat beside an older man she figured was his master, his head propped against the man's shoulder as tears ran down his face. She walked past him, growling in annoyance when he didn't look up. Stopping in front of the master and student, she said, "Hey, crybaby. Do you need me to swoop in and save you again?"

The boy pulled his hands away from his eyes and glared at her. "Not unless you can bring back the dead," he spat.

Those words stopped the speech she had prepared in lieu of seeing him again. One of the retrievers had died under his command. Such a mess-up on his first mission would shake him. She filed away her speech for another time, a time after he had grieved, or perhaps a time that would never feel appropriate or never come at all. There wasn't much one could say in such a situation… the words that came to Temari's mind were all clichéd phrases that had angered her when she heard them after her own father's funeral. Words like "I'm sorry for your loss" and "he was a great man" meant nothing and would only deepen Shikamaru's grief. She knew that better than anyone.

So she spoke the only thoughts that came first to her mind.

"You have to get stronger. That's the only way you can stop it from happening again," she told him, watching his eyes flash stormy black, anger building up behind the lenses. "If you don't lead them who will? They're shinobi, Shikamaru, they won't stand still and stay back with you because you want to protect them; they'll follow another chūnin, one who cannot come up with plans like yours, and they'll die out there because no one knows how to use their abilities like you do."

"Do I know their abilities that well? Do I really? I just got Neji killed out there. I don't even know how he died … I haven't seen him since I left him to face Kidomaru alone. Tell me, Temari, do I know them that well?" His rage coursed out with each word, the dark spark of light behind his eyes dimming, condensing into water, and running down his face.

The man beside him grabbed his upper arm and gingerly turned him away from Temari. The movements were soft and careful, it was no secret that the Jōnin was afraid to break the last few cords of reason within Shikamaru's fractured mind. "We should go see Neji before we tell the others," he offered reasonable. He guided his student to the operating room's door, bypassing Temari all the while.

_Broken panes of glass, letting dead black light shine through, bathing the world they fall upon in darkness._ Temari thought as she looked into Shikamaru's eyes. _He's in more danger now than he was before I saved him._

Had she saved him only to watch him descend into a fate worse than death? Where along the lines did she go wrong, did _they_ go wrong?

"You should come too, Temari."

She looked at the Jōnin, who nodded fiercely and tightened his grip on Shikamaru's shoulders.

_He's scared,_ she realised.

"Sh-Should I?" she stammered. The Jōnin's expression left little room for negotiation, so she reluctantly followed the two Konoha shinobi into the examination room.

**Shikamaru**

The Healing Resuscitation Regeneration Jutsu pictogram still dominated the floor. Blood had pooled and dried in its centre, splatters leading to a door in the back. Shikamaru felt Asuma's pressure on his shoulder, guiding him towards the door, but he couldn't pull his eyes away from the blackening pool in the middle of the floor.

_So much blood… how badly injured were you when they brought you in, Neji? Everyone besides me has terrible wounds they're trying to recover from and here I stand with a broken finger … and Neji's … body lies through those doors._ How quickly he had forgotten the corpse of his comrade.

_I'll come and see you now, Neji. I was so worried about Choji that I wasn't thinking clearly enough to realise that I should have left you with someone else._

Shikamaru allowed Asuma to pull him through the door.

The room on the other side looked like the others: standard white walls, metal frame bed, white sheets, and white chairs. Its purpose was betrayed only by the sheer absence of any monitoring equipment: there was no need to check the vitals of a corpse.

Neji lay on the bed in his best black clothes: a tunic and a shirt. His hands had been carefully folded over his chest and his eyes were just closed, like he was meditating under Tenten's favourite target.

_First the team, now I have to tell Tenten too,_ Shikamaru groaned inwardly, this is becoming more and more troublesome. Just thinking those thoughts made him feel guilty, guiltier than he should ever have to feel.

_You didn't ask for this, Neji._

Shikamaru turned to leave. "I need to tell the others."

Asuma nodded and waved him away.

Temari watched him leave, her face overwritten with concern. She shouldn't let him leave by himself, because he needed someone to lean on for the time being, but instead she stood motionless, dividing her attention from one thing to the next.

Women are troublesome, Shikamru thought as he closed the door.

.:.

Naruto's room was closest to Operating Room 5, but the door was locked. Shikamaru decided he would try again on his way back. He ventured down the hall, reviewing the room numbers he'd received from a receptionist as he plotted the most efficient route to the rest of his team's rooms. They were all on the same floor but in separate wings, making it hard to visit the rooms efficiently. So troublesome.

Choji was the closest and Shikamaru had already visited both him and Kiba. Neither had taken the news well, and there had admittedly been few tears and a punch through the wall from Kiba, but they would come to terms with time, after the news had fully sunk in.

The funeral. _There will be many tears shed there; I am sure of it._

Rock Lee, the unofficial last member of their squad, was next. He was Neji's teammate, life-long rival and, Shikamaru expected, the most difficult to tell. Stopping in front of Recovery Room 24, he leaned against the wall, trying to gather his bearings in one basket, but the basket had a hole in the side and everything he put in it fell out.

The door swung open. "I thought I heard the sighs of a forlorn youth here! Are the spring scents getting to you, Shikamaru?"

Not him. Anyone but him.

The green-suited man had so much hair gel keeping his bowl-cut black hair in his place that Shikamaru figured he could run into a wall and the solid mass of hair would absorb the shock. He pulled the shadow-wielder inside. "Congratulations on completing your first mission! How does it feel, knowing that you are such an accomplished youth?"

_No one ever asked me how it would feel to be crushed by a sweaty guy in a green spandex suit, and I wasn't anxious to find out._

"Guy-Sensai, my mission was not a success," Shikamaru began. "One of my comrades is dead."

"Who?" Rock Lee sat up in the metal-framed hospital bed. He, unlike his mentor, did not gel his hair today, and it was flatter than normal, resting against the depressions of his temples.

Shikamaru stared awkwardly down at his feet, collecting his feelings in the basket, begging for his thoughts to flow out the hole and reach the green man and his miniature. For once the thoughts and feelings did not escape but settled in a manner that blocked the hole. For once his feelings did not run out into the world but remained trapped in his mind. He was sure that his eyes had acquired more hairline fractures.

Once an old manor had windows made of the finest coloured glass, seamed with thin lines of melted silver glue so they reflected the light of the sun across the floor. His windows were so beautiful that his neighbours told their children not to play within five kilometres of the manor house for fear of hitting the one flaw in the glass. Then a stray hailstone fell, gentling knocking the windows. The tone of a silver bell rang through the house before the windows fell to the floor in a shower of petal-shaped shards.

_Why am I remembering that story now of all times?_ Shikamaru asked himself belittlingly.

He felt weak and dizzy, even leaning against the wall for support could not stop him from slipping down to the floor.

Æ

I hope you enjoyed. More to come. Remember to review.


	2. Chapter 2: Memories Dance in the Shadows

Hello fan-fiction-world!

Well I am back [albeit a bit late] for round two. I hope this piece does as well as chapter one [thank you to Ayrmed and an unknown guest for their generous reviews]. There isn't a lot I can say about this chapter besides the fact that it is short [random Ed Elric comment here]. Trust me though, the next chapter will be longer.

Please remember to review: tell me how I did what the chapter was like, what you think the next chapter will be like ... stuff like that.

I do not own Naruto and neither do I pretend to own such an awesome manga: all rights belong to Mr Kishimoto Masashi and associates.

Æ

**Shikamaru Nara**

Shikamaru couldn't have been more grateful to leave the room, the tears, the questions. They say it gets easier, but he was feeling the deep, intense pressure Tsunade had warned him about when she called him in for his first pre-mission conference: the pain of informing others of what they have now lost. It hurt more than the pain he felt as he stood by, watching them cry; he, however, had no tears left to shed.

Even through the door he could hear the sharp cries of vented despair and anguish. Guy and Rock Lee: Neji's master and his rival team-mate, Shikamaru thought they would be the hardest to tell, that they would pass the news on to Tenten, the third side of Team Guy and, more often than not, Neji's training partner.

With his fingers crossed, Shikamaru had waited for a good time to leave, but he anticipated the next words a split second before Lee whispered, "Tenten's at the training ground. She doesn't know yet, but you'll tell her. Right, Shikamaru?"

He absently nodded because his brain was still too numb to notice what its uncontrolled body was doing, what the mindless shell was agreeing to. Stupid thing did not feel emotional pain. So long as there weren't any kunai flying it would do anything.

He cursed repeatedly under his breath as he tried to control his shaking hands.

_I can't stay here._ The thought was almost subconscious. _Who's next? Naruto._

The wailing gradually faded as he ran down the hall until it was just a figment of sound echoing in his head. Somehow the memory seemed much louder in his mind then it had been in real life. Shikamaru knew it was a memory that would never go away.

Naruto's door was wide open.

Shikamaru took a quick look inside, hoping that Naruto was alone. _I'm sure everyone in the hospital already knows, but …_ he couldn't come up with a decent reason, he just wanted to be the one to tell Naruto. Maybe it was because they, along with Kiba, Choji, Neji, and even Lee in some respect, were a team, and he, Shikamaru, was the leader. The team's bonds were now broken, and he had to fulfil the dreaded role of telling his team what had befallen one of their trusted friends.

Though the window shades were closed, soft golden sunlight permeated through the gaps, washing the walls and the metal bars of the single hospital bed in its saffron glow. Beneath the white sheets shaded with sunlight lay the mummy-wrapped form of a human. Naruto was almost unrecognisable if not for the dark blue eyes and tufts of bright blond hair that poked through the white wrappings. He was alone in the room, a single miserable soul staring solemnly at his bandaged fingers, and Shikamaru was thankful for their privacy.

_I wonder if he heard already from Kakashi-Sensai or Tsunade and that's why he's so quiet? I wouldn't put it past them … this whole mission is troublesome, and the trouble doesn't go away, even when it's over._ An acute stab of guilt hit him somewhere in his gut. _I'm sorry, Neji._

He knocked on the door-frame.

The bandaged head turned slowly his way, hollow eyes attempting to fill their empty depths with him. "Shikamaru? What are you doing here?" The voice, though raspy, still sounded a bit like Naruto – the thinnest traces of Shikamaru's excitable classmate finding a way through the solemn, broken syllables, just close enough to be words. "I haven't seen anyone else from the team yet. Are they okay?"

"Kiba and Akamaru took some damage, but they're recovering. Lee's fine, Choji's fine. Neji …"

_I am the team leader: I must be strong._

He prayed Naruto wouldn't cry like the others.

Naruto was looking him in the eyes, his expression slowly shifting into a mask of horror and unreleased emotions. Though unpredictable and, according to Ino, colour blind, Naruto was not stupid, he would figure it out before a single word left Shikamaru's mouth.

Shikamaru looked at the floor. He wanted Naruto to guess, he wanted to leave, he wanted someone else to have this troublesome job.

_As the team leader it is my job to tell him._

"Neji didn't make it." He spat the words, Naruto staring at him, shocked speechless and caught in awe. Shikamaru turned his back to the boy and started for the exit.

He was reaching for the door knob when Naruto asked, "How badly was he hurt?"

Shikamaru glanced back. "Badly enough that it killed him. I don't know the details; you'll have to ask Tsunade about that."

Naruto's eyes returned to his hands. "Did you tell the rest of the team?"

"Yes, you were the last."

Naruto's gaze went back up, tears running down the curves of his cheekbones, dripping from his jaw to the blankets. "I suppose we are all alive because of him."

Shikamaru nodded.

"I hated him, at first because of what he did to Hinata and now I want to hate him for not keeping his promise to make it back alive, but it's harder to hate someone when you know you're alive because of them." His blue eyes closed and he leaned back into a heap of pillows. "Thanks for telling everyone. I know it was hard, but the higher-ups must have a lot of trust in you if they trust you like this. Usually the medical team tells everyone else, or the Hokage makes an announcement. The chūnin leaders just make the report, I think."

Shikamaru curled his hands around the doorknob. _Some genius I am,_ he had never thought that Tsunade was trying to help him as much as the rest of the team by placing more trust in him.

"You know, if you keep beating yourself up, Tsunade won't trust you as much."

"Having to fight my way back up would be such a drag." He pulled the door closed.

Naruto really knew how to dig at someone, but he also knew how to dig someone out of trouble. You always left him feeling irritated, yes, but also like you wanted to laugh in the world's face … or paint the stone hokages'.

Æ

As always, thank you for reading and remember to review!


End file.
